Elections

Parliamentary elections slated for Dec. 17, women representation stands at 15%

TUNIS – A total of 1,429 candidates have applied to contest Tunisia's parliamentary elections scheduled to be held on Dec. 17, the country's election commission said.

Faroukh Bouasker, head of the Independent High Authority for Elections, said in a televised interview that the deadline for receiving applications from candidates ended on Thursday.

The representation of women candidates stands at 15%, he added.

Click here to read the full article published by Anadolu Agency on 28 October 2022.

A group of researchers and female politicians said Monday that they will start a campaign to help mothers with young children run in next April’s nationwide gubernatorial and municipal assembly elections.

The project, called “Kosodate Senkyo Hack!” (which roughly translates as “tackling elections while child-rearing”), aims to give a greater voice in local politics to the dwindling ranks of families with small children by having mothers become lawmakers, project members told a news conference in Tokyo.

Click here to read the full article published by The Japan Times on 17 October 2022.

Rosie Campbell is professor of politics and Director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, where she works with Julia. Rosie has authored research on voting behaviour, public opinion and the politics of diversity and political recruitment.

In this episode, Julia asks Rosie about women’s participation in politics and gendered patterns of support for the populist radical right. Julia and Rosie also discuss the main issues facing women that risk stalling gender equality over the next decade, and how we can accelerate the rate of change and advance women’s access to leadership.

Click here to access the podcast.

Despite historic gains in the past two congressional elections in the US, women hold just 27% of the seats. As Americans prepare to reshape Congress in the midterms, could Bolivia inspire change?

Bolivia is one of the few countries in the world where roughly 50% of lawmakers at every level of government are women.

This is no accident, but the result of an electoral law which requires half of all party nominees must be female.

Quotas were introduced in 1997 when just 9% of Bolivia's national parliament were women. Later on it was made part of the constitution.

"Lately we've seen certain countries backslide on women's rights," said Adriana Salvatierra, who was a senator from 2015 to 2019, and became the youngest ever president of Bolivia's Senate.

Click here to read the full article published by BBC on 18 October 2022.

Nigeria’s two dominant parties, ACP and PDP, have less than 6 per cent of their parliamentary candidates as women.

Women’s representation in Nigeria’s parliament is among the lowest in the world but could get worse based on the new list of candidates for the next parliament.

At present, only 7.3 per cent (8 of 109) of Nigeria’s senators are women while only 3.6 per cent (13 of 360) of the members of the House of Representatives are women.

Despite the low representation in the current parliament, the percentage of female candidates in the elections that produced the current lawmakers is higher than what obtains in the list for next year’s parliamentary elections.

Click here to read the full article published by Premium Times on 23 October 2022.

Polls predict that an independent candidate supported by the Pirates and Greens is likely to win the run-off against right-wing and ruling party-backed hopefuls to become Slovenia’s first female president.

Slovenia is heading to the polls to elect a new President on Sunday, with incumbent Borut Pahor not running due to term limits.

Polls suggest that no candidate will win more than 50% of the vote,  making a run-off between the top two candidates likely, tentatively scheduled for 13 November 2022.

For the upcoming first round, centre-right to right-wing candidate Anže Logar of former prime minister Janez Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS-EPP) is leading the polls with about 30% of decided voters.

Logar is closely followed by Nataša Pirc Musar, a non-partisan supported by the Slovenian Pirate Party and SMS (European Greens, polling at about 27%.

Click here to read the full article published by EURACTIV on 17 October 2022.